How long does the incorporation process take?Business filing times vary by state. See our LLC pages for state specific information. In general, though, If we do your filing for you, we usually send your documents to the state within one business day after you sign up. Foreign registrations can take longer since we usually have to request a certificate of good standing from your home state. Many states now offer online filings that are fast or even immediate. Other states, like New Mexico, take several months to process unless you pay their expedite fee.

My corporation or LLC’s name is not available. Now what?Don’t panic. You can still register your company with the state. The state will require you to adopt an assumed name, fictitious name, or dba. This just means that you will operate under a different name in that state. Your legal name in your domestic (home) state stays the same.Some states require you to fill out an additional form (and pay an additional fee). Other states allow you to list your legal name and the assumed name right on the application for authority.

I just signed up for the filing service! Now what?Thanks for signing up for our corporate filing service! If you requested a phone call, we will attempt to call you. If not, we will begin working on your filing. Check your email, because if there is any kind of issue, your filer may send you an email, and the faster you respond, the faster you get filed.There is a timeline for the filing in your online account. Many of our clients freak out a little when they see it. Remember that this is a timeline for your total incorporation experience, from sign up to document retrieval. It includes state processing and mail time. It is a projection based on our experience filing with each state; it can certainly vary.

How can I get around listing my members/managers when I form or register my LLC?Some states don’t require member or manager information. Most states do. Our website is packed with information about each state’s requirements and we can answer your questions about a particular state. See our asset protection section for more information.

What state should I form my company in?There are many reasons why people would want to form a company in a tax friendly state. New Mexico and Wyoming LLCs are great for holding companies and asset protection. But as a general rule, you will need to register your company in the state where you will do business. So forming a Wyoming LLC that is going to do business in California is probably not going to help you too much. If you are considering a complicated tax scheme, or you want to set up multiple companies to protect your assets, we suggest talking to an attorney or a CPA. There are usually too many factors for us to tell you what state you should file in. It may be worth it to fork over some attorney’s fees if you are really interested in saving money long term.
If you are looking for more information about setting up an company with more privacy, read our page on setting up a state corporate income tax guide.

Do you include a business name search?In order to start a filing, you have to do a business name search. If we are doing a filing for you, there is obviously a business name search done. Many websites market this as a free add-on, but you can’t really do your job of filing a business document without doing a business name search.

Non U.S. Resident Incorporation

I’m from out of country and I’d like the originalsAlmost all the states provide us with copies of what they filed to create your business. So there’s not much point of us printing out a copy and mailing it to you across the world. You always have the documents in your online account. You can print those out and use those if you would like.If there’s something that needs to be original, we will try to get it to your out of the U.S. address. A lot of times addresses don’t come through very well, so please fill out a contact form if you’re worried about getting an original document and we will deal with your original document on a per case basis and make sure you get your original documents. Also, please log into your account and make sure your address looks ok there. In the US, we often base addresses off of: street name, city, state, country, and zip. Please try to fill in these blanks the best you can for how your country organizes this information.